The Woman
The woman is the poem’s protagonist. The text focuses on her struggles with creativity and motherhood. She is depicted as exhausted and frustrated, yet determined to balance the many demands on her time. For example, the poem opens with her practicing a fugue, remaining dedicated to her music despite having to simultaneously juggle the demands of motherhood and household work. However, the woman seems to realize that “it can matter / to no one now if she plays well or not,” suggesting that she is resigned to being overlooked and undervalued as a musician due to her role as a mother (lines 1-2).
Harwood uses a form of limited third-person perspective that allows the reader to see the woman’s insight into her own predicament. For example, she continues to practice her music, but feels frustrated that no one cares about the success of her performance. She reflects on a past time when she was able to gain an audience with a renowned pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, thus demonstrating her high levels of creative success and passion. Yet she remembers that Rubinstein simply yawned, not appreciating her artistic talent just as her children do not appreciate her work (given that they chatter and fight with each other while she practices). The poem further highlights the woman’s many responsibilities—in rapid succession, she must hush her children, rescue a burning pot on the stove, scrub the pot, comfort her children when they discover a dead mouse, and dispose of the mouse.
The Children
The reader is given limited insight into the children—they mainly function symbolically, as the “countersubject” of the fugue, or a contrasting theme to the mother’s artistic ability. The children must be hushed, comforted, and fed, all of which is up to the mother (the father is notably absent, reflecting the gender roles of the 1960s that placed the burden of childcare upon women). As such, the children “overwhelm” the woman’s ability to focus on her music. They are depicted as typical, boisterous children, who “chatter,” “fight,” and “caper.” Their constant, chaotic noise as they interact with each other is contrasted with the pleasing and patterned music that the mother plays in her fugue. It is implied that they do not understand their mother’s creative passions and are not empathetic, since as young children they are focused on their own needs and experiences. At the end of the poem, they discover the dead mouse and become “afraid,” needing the mother to comfort them. While this is natural, it demonstrates the emotional as well as physical labor that the mother must constantly perform to satisfy her children’s needs. Thus, throughout the poem, the children are a locus of constant activity who demand attention and stimulation.
Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein is a celebrated Polish-American pianist who is briefly referenced in the poem. He began his career in Paris but performed internationally (although he deliberately refused to perform in Germany because he was disgusted by the country’s conduct during World War I). The woman performed her music for him, but he “yawned,” indicating disinterest. The reference to Rubinstein serves to juxtapose the woman’s current situation, in which she must squeeze practicing sessions into her busy household life, with her former presumable success as an artist, since she performed at the highest levels for an extremely famous musician. Rubinstein is not a fully-developed character in the poem, but is an example of allusion—an artistic device in which the writer refers to something outside of the specific work. Here, by referencing a real-life iconic musician, Harwood both grounds the poem in reality and establishes the poem’s setting in the early to mid-twentieth century, as Rubinstein was active from 1904 to 1976.
